Tom Clancy - Debt of Honor

"Good, right on time," Richter replied. A quick look at the threat screen showed that he was within minutes of entering a yellow area. He felt the need to rub his face, but both his hands were busy now. A check of the fuel gauges showed that his pylon-mounted tanks were about empty. "Punching off the wings."

"Roger—that'll help."

Richter flipped the safety cover off the jettison switch. It was a late addition to the Comanche design, but it had finally occurred to someone that if the chopper was supposed to be stealthy, then it might be a good idea to be able to eliminate the unstealthy features in flight. Richter slowed the aircraft briefly and flipped the toggle that ignited explosive bolts, dumping the wings and their tanks into the Sea of Japan.

"Good separation," the backseater confirmed. The threat screen changed as soon as the items were gone. The computer kept careful track of how stealthy the aircraft was. The Comanche's nose dipped again, and the aircraft accelerated back to its cruising speed.

"They're predictable, aren't they?" the Japanese controller observed to his chief subordinate.

"I think you just proved that. Even better, you just proved to them what we can do." The two officers traded a look. Both had been worried about the capabilities of the American Rapier fighter, and now both thought they could relax about it. A formidable aircraft, and one their Eagle drivers needed to treat with respect, but not invisible.

"Predictable response," the American controller said. "And they just showed us something. Call it ten seconds?"

"Thin, but long enough. It'll work," the colonel from Langley said, reaching for a coffee. "Now, let's reinforce that idea." On the main screen, the F-22's turned back north, and at the edge of the AWACS detection radius. the F-15J's did the same, covering the American maneuver like sailboats in a tacking duel, striving to stay between the American fighters and their priceless E-767's, which the dreadful accidents of a few days before had made even more precious.

Landfall was very welcome indeed. Far more agile than the transport had been the previous night, the Comanehe selected a spot completely devoid of human habitation and then started flying down cracks in the mountainous ground, shielded from the distant air-surveillance aircraft by solid rock that even their powerful systems could not penetrate.

"Feet dry," Richter's backseater said gratefully. "Forty minutes of fuel remaining."

"You good at flapping your arms?" the pilot inquired, also relaxed, just a little, to be over dry land. If something went wrong, well, eating rice wasn't all that bad, was it? His helmet display showed the ground in green shadows, and there were no lights about from streetlights or cars or houses, and the worst part of the flight in was over. The actual mission was something he'd managed to set aside. He preferred to worry about only one thing at a time. You lived longer that way.

The final ridgeline appeared just as programmed. Richter slowed the aircraft, circling to figure out the winds as he looked down for the people he'd been briefed to expect. There. Somebody tossed out a green chem-light, and in his low-light vision systems it looked as bright as a full moon.

"ZORRO Lead calling ZORRO Base, over."

"Lead, this is Base. Authentication Golf Mike Zulu, over," the voice replied, giving the okay-code he'd been briefed to expect. Richter hoped the voice didn't have a gun to its head.

"Copy. Out." He spiraled down quickly, flaring his Comanehe and settling on what appeared to be an almost-flat spot close to the treeline. As soon as the aircraft touched down, three men appeared from the trees. They were dressed like U.S. Army soldiers, and Richter allowed himself a chance to breathe as he cooled off the engines prior to shutdown. The rotor had not yet completed its final revolution before a hose came out to the aircraft's fuel connection.

"Welcome to Japan. I'm Captain Checa."

"Sandy Richter," the pilot said, climbing out.

"Any problems coming in?"

"Not anymore." Hell, I got here, didn't I? he wanted to say, still tense from the three-hour marathon to invade the country. Invade? Eleven Rangers and six aviators. Hey , he thought, you're all under arrest!

"There's number two…" Checa observed. "Quiet babies, aren't they?"

"We don't want to advertise, sir." It was perhaps the most surprising aspect of the Comanehe. The Sikorsky engineers had long known that most of the noise generated by a helicopter came from the tail rotor's conflict with the main. The one on the RAH-66 was shrouded, and the main rotor had five fairly thick composite blades, resulting in a helicopter with less than a third of the acoustical signature of any other rotary-wing aircraft yet built. And the area wouldn't hurt, Richter thought, looking around. All the trees, the thin mountain air. Not a bad place for the mission, he concluded as the second Comanche settled down on its landing pad, fitly meters away. The men who had fueled his aircraft were already stringing camouflage netting over it, using poles cut from the pine forest.

"Come on, let's get some food in you."

"Real food or MRHs?" the chief warrant officer asked.

"You can't have everything, Mr. Richter," Checa told him.

The aviator remembered when Army C-Rations had also included cigarettes. No longer, what with the new healthy Army, and there wasn't much sense in asking a Ranger for a smoke. Damned athletes.

The Rapiers turned away an hour later, convinced, the Japanese air-defense people were sure, that they could not penetrate the Kami-Eagle line that guarded the northeast approaches to the home islands. Even the best American aircraft and best systems could not defeat what they had to face, and that was good. On their screens they watched the contacts fade off, and soon the emissions from the E-3B's faded as well, heading back to Shemya to report their failure to their masters.

The Americans were realists. Courageous warriors, to be sure—the officers in the E-767's would not make the mistake as their forebears had of thinking that Americans lacked the ardor for real combat operations. That error had been a costly one. But war was a technical exercise, and they had allowed their strength to fall below a line from which recovery was not technically possible. And that was too bad for them.

The Rapiers had to tank on the way back, and didn't use their supercruise ability, because wasting fuel was not purposeful. The weather was again crummy at Shemya, and the fighters rode down under positive ground-control to their safe landings, then taxied off to their hangars, which were more crowded now with the arrival of four F-15E Strike Eagles from Mountain Home Air Force Base in Idaho. They also regarded the mission as a success.

"Are you mad?" Scherenko asked.

"Think about it," Clark said, again back in the Russian Embassy. "We want a political solution to this, don't we? Then Koga's our best chance. You told us the government didn't put him in the bag. Who does that leave? He's probably right there." You could even see the building out Scherenko's window, as luck would have it.

"Is it possible?" the Russian asked, worried that the Americans would ask for assistance that he was quite unsuited to provide.

"There's a risk, but it's unlikely he has an army up there. He wouldn't be keeping the guy there unless he wanted to be covert about it. Figure five or six people, max."

"And two of you!" Scherenko insisted.

"Like the man said," Ding offered with a very showy smile, "no big deal."

So the old KGB file was true. Clark was not a real intelligence officer, but a paramilitary type, and the same was true of his arrogant young partner who mostly just sat there, looking out the window.